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Former U.S. President George W. Bush criticized the Western withdrawal from Afghanistan on Wednesday, using an interview with a German broadcaster to outline his fears Afghan women and girls will “suffer unspeakable harm.” Asked in an interview with German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) whether the withdrawal is a mistake, Bush replied: “You know, I think it is, yeah, because I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad.”

Intelligence agencies violated the constitutional rights of American citizens through illegal surveillance during the Obama administration, recently declassified documents from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) show. The secretive court also notes a change for the better under President Trump’s team. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorizes two courts to provide judicial review for U.S. intelligence agencies when their activities require them to monitor people on U.S. soil. One is FISC, and the other is the court that hears appeals from FISC decisions, the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review (FISCR). The benches of FISC are comprised of...

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, March 26 (UPI) -- Michelle Obama's tour of Asia to promote girls' education was marked by blunt criticism from Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who said the first lady was "playing around" and using hopeful rhetoric about making improvements but not guaranteeing aid. The Phnom Penh Post reported that Hun Sen told U.S. embassy personnel and USAID workers Wednesday that Obama's Saturday visit with 10 schoolgirls in the Cambodian city of Siem Reap, part of the White House's "Let Girls Learn" initiative, was good but not enough. He said the U.S. government should promise scholarships – if...

Ahead of a possible presidential run, Hillary Clinton appears to be distancing herself from what she called President Barack Obama's foreign policy "failure": the decision not to intervene during the early stages of the Syrian civil war. In an interview with The Atlantic published on Sunday, the former secretary of state says the "failure" of the United States to those protesting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad led to the rise of al-Qaida-inspired groups like ISIS, the militants currently creating havoc in Syria and Iraq. “The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who...

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said her department was “deeply troubled” by Israel’s strike on a Gaza power plant, continuing an ongoing trend of Kerry’s State Department obliquely criticizing Israel’s actions. “We’re deeply troubled by the humanitarian impact of reduced electricity in Gaza,” Psaki told reporters, “particularly for emergency services, and urge all parties to respect the civilian nature of these facilities.”

In a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said free enterprise isn´t always best. Government must step in. "The free enterprise system is a strong system," he said, but it "created unfairness and injustice when it came to health care, which we are addressing with this Affordable Care Act." In passing that law, Durbin said Democrats "rejected the free enterprise approach to health care and said let´s have something that basically respects families." He also criticized Republicans for embracing free enterprise: "Let me tell you a free enterprise idea when it came to health care. Before

Secretary of State Hilary Clinton presented on Thursday the State Department's 2011 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices that criticizes Israel for its treatment of African migrants, an issue vigorously debated in Israeli public discourse lately. The report states that Sudanese and Eritrean asylum seekers, which are about 85 percent of African migrants in Israel "were not allowed access to asylum procedures but were given renewable 'conditional release' documents that deferred deportation and had to be renewed every few months." The report quotes statistics provided by the UNHCR, showing that during the year out of 4,603 new asylum applications 3,692...

n an apparent about-face, US officials criticized Tuesday evening the deal brokered for the freedom of Gilad Shalit, which set hundreds of terrorists, including those who had murdered Americans, free. The criticism came after it became clear that the released terrorists included those who had murdered Jews with United States citizenship. Earlier on Tuesday, US President Barak Obama had said he was pleased with the deal that set Shalit free despite his own nation’s strict policy of not negotiating with terrorists for the release of its citizens. Obama also expressed the hope Israel and officials in Ramallah would take the...

OTTAWA -- Now this is rich. Canada has been blasted at the United Nations by none other than the brutal and dangerous dictatorship of North Korea for boycotting the Conference on Disarmament while the backwards terrorist state is the temporary chair. But Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said he'll wear North Korea's criticism of Canada's principled foreign policy as a "badge of honour." At a meeting of the General Assembly in New York Thursday, Canada voiced its concern that the disarmament body of the UN is "effectively broken" and again was critical of the move to make North Korea the...

The Obama administration is stepping up its criticism of the Bahraini government, as anti-regime protests in the U.S.-allied Persian Gulf nation entered their third day on Wednesday. “What the president believes … is that Bahrain, like all the countries in the region, needs to respect the universal rights of its citizens, their right to protest, their right to have their grievances heard,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said Wednesday. “They should refrain from violence on both sides,” he said. “We are obviously watching events from Bahrain and around the region very closely.” Protests in Bahrain, which hosts the U.S....

WASHINGTON – Bristling with impatience, President Barack Obama on Thursday openly and sharply questioned whether Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's pledge to shift power to his vice president is an "immediate, meaningful or sufficient" sign of reform for a country in upheaval. Without naming Mubarak, Obama issued a written statement that criticized the leader for not offering clarity to his people or a concrete path to democracy. He called on Egyptian government leaders to do so, declaring: "They have not yet seized that opportunity."

Reporting from Sacramento — California electricity users have paid $700 million in surcharges for research on clean and efficient energy production, but not all of the money may have been well spent and the program should be overhauled or killed, state officials say in a new report. Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor has concluded .. about 10% of the money collected by the California Energy Commission was spent on research not directly related to the purpose of the surcharges. Questionable grants .. research on deforestation, salmon habitat restoration and "the potential impact of climate change on bird distribution," .. ... The...

(Reuters) - The White House renewed its sharp criticism of BP (BP.L) (BP.N) CEO Tony Hayward after he attended a yacht race off the English coast on Saturday as his company struggles to plug its huge Gulf of Mexico oil leak. "This has just been part of a long line of PR gaffes and mistakes," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said in an interview taped for ABC's "This Week" week program, referring to Hayward. Sheila Williams, a spokeswoman for the energy giant, said Hayward attended the boat race at the Isle of Wight, saying he was spending some...

(CNSNews.com) – Palestinian Authority chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said Wednesday he found “distasteful” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s invoking of the Bible to highlight the longstanding Jewish claim to Jerusalem. The veteran P.A. official made the comment after Netanyahu noted during a special parliamentary session marking “Jerusalem Day” that the words “Jerusalem” and “Zion” appeared in the Old Testament, the Jewish Tanakh, 850 times.

Obama claimed that the economy was "teetering on a potential crisis"...and pointed a finger at President Bush, accusing him of poor fiscal management. "History will not judge President bush kindly," Obama said...arguing that Bush appeared nonchalant over the potential crisis in remarks last week. "When I saw the president in his press conference, almost lighthearted and joking about some of these issues, I think it did not instill the kind of confidence in the American people and certainly it didn't instill any confidence in me that the Administration is taking the situation seriously," Obama said. He also argued that a...

BEIJING – Washington's ambassador to Beijing hit out Friday at negative U.S. media coverage of President Barack Obama's visit to China, saying it failed to take into account important progress on many issues. Although producing no breakthroughs on key issues, Obama's first state visit to the Asian giant that ended Wednesday was heralded by both sides as a success. The trip was the top news story in China, drawing strong interest from the Chinese public who, surveys suggest, are largely positive in their view of the American president.

CAIRO – Al-Qaida's deputy leader on Tuesday criticized President Barack Obama's upcoming speech to the Islamic world in Cairo, saying it will not change the "bloody messages" the U.S. military is sending Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan. Al-Qaida has repeatedly lashed out at Obama since he was elected, a move some analysts believe indicates the terrorist organization is worried he will be effective in improving the U.S. image in the Muslim world. Obama has pitched his speech at Cairo University on Thursday as a key part of that process. "His bloody messages were received and are still being received by...

GENEVA – Nations need common rules for responding to flu outbreaks to prevent discrimination and unfair trade restrictions, Mexico's U.N. envoy said Friday, complaining that Mexican citizens and exports were being unfairly singled out. Some countries have "developed some attitudes which I will straightforward qualify as discriminatory against Mexicans," Luis Alfonso De Alba said. The World Health Organization is looking into the measures countries take in combatting the outbreak and the justifications they give, but WHO has no plans to make the findings public, said spokesman Gregory Hartl.

On ThursdayÂ’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith opened the show by declaring: "As President Obama heads on his first foreign trip, some state governors are saying 'thanks, but no thanks' to the stimulus money, even in these desperate times. We'll ask one of them why." Later, co-host Maggie Rodriguez interviewed Republican South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and asked: "Even if it takes a while to get the money, how do you justify, let's say, not taking it to your constituents when in your state, for example, in December had the third highest unemployment rate in the country. Don't you...

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (Reuters) - Republican presidential hopeful John McCain sharply criticized the flagging U.S. war effort in Afghanistan on Tuesday and vowed to turn it around if elected, starting with sending more U.S. troops. "That's no way to run a war," said McCain, complaining that security in Afghanistan has deteriorated and the status quo is not acceptable. McCain waded into the debate over what to do in Afghanistan, a war begun after the September 11 attacks that Democrats charge has been neglected by the Bush administration as it concentrates on Iraq. An attack on a U.S. base near the...